Clips
by Clannadlvr
Summary: Visions take Johnny to a place he never thought he'd want to be...


Title: Clips  
Author: Clannadlvr  
Fandom: The Dead Zone  
Characters: Walt Bannerman, Sarah Bannerman, Johnny Smith  
Summary: Visions bring their situation into focus for Johnny.

A/N: For dafnagreer and the yuletide ficathon

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Walking around Walt Bannerman's office is like being forced to watch a movie he'd never willingly buy tickets to or rent from the video store. He likes each actor, even loves them in his own fractured way, but can't bear to watch them in the scenes they play. Still, he doesn't have a choice as each touch forces clips into his mind.

Johnny Smith had been sitting in his living room, armored by stone walls and security fields, when the call came. The perfectly constructed fortress was pierced by a trembling voice that no matter how much pain it brought him he could not ignore.

"Johnny? Oh god, Johnny, are you there? Something's happened to Walt. He's missing…oh, please, could you…oh god, Johnny…just tell me he's alive…"

Before Sarah had even broken down into tears, Johnny had been walking toward the door, cane in hand.

So now he's here in Walt's office, doing his best to track the sheriff's movements during the dangerous case in which he'd been involved, trying to find out whether he'll be able to fulfill Sarah's request. But every pencil he touches and file he grabs brings him farther and farther from Walt's fate and leads Johnny to the last place he wants to be-

In his mental theatre watching "It's Your Life," starring Walt Bannerman.

Instead of seeing Walt tied up in an abandoned warehouse somewhere or- whether for better for worse he can't be honest enough with himself to know- dead on the side of the road, he sees scenes from the past.

A few give him some insight into a Walt he never knew. He picks up the caboose of a toy patrol car from the shelf and sees a brunette boy who can't be more than six years old unwrap a Christmas gift and hold the toy for the first time, wonder in his eyes. It's the same glint he recognizes when he sees Walt look at Johnny Jr. come into the room.

His palm caresses the butt of a bb gun and he's thrown into the Bannermans' backyard as a preteen Walt tries to impress his father with his sharp shooting. A pat on the shoulder after a particularly good shot speaks volumes about a father and son who, while never finding the words, show they love each other just the same.

His fingers trail along the faux gilt edge of a department store frame and the picture within comes alive. A teenaged Walt hikes in a wooded area with two of his best friends, making camp in a clearing in the midst of a treacherous forest. They laugh at the possible danger of being so far from civilization, popping the tops on Pabst Blue Ribbons and listing the girls who are hot or not from their senior class.

Johnny touches the petal of a rose tucked inside of a tiny cardboard box, his fingers twitching as he sees the hospital corridor he knows too well. Then he sees himself, Sarah by his bedside, grief fresh in her eyes. He watches as Walt hands Sarah a bouquet of multicolor buds, the shades that a florist know mean friendship, forgiveness, sorrow, and love. Sarah smiles and with the insight that comes with his connection to Walt in the Dead Zone, Johnny knows it's the moment that Sarah started to let him go.

The images are harder to deal with as Johnny moves around the room. The visions have never been this clear cut before or chronological, he thinks in the back of his mind. He tries to disrupt the history, wanting to jump back to Walt's days as an Eagle Scout rather than watch the morbid wooing of a grieving fiancé over a comatose body. But even when he grabs desperately onto a merit badge, he's denied a break. Instead of seeing Walt working on a fishing lure or participating in an obstacle course, he sees him proudly showing Sarah around the very office in which Johnny is standing. Sarah grins at his pride over a childhood accomplishment and touches a hand to his arm, friendly, yet promising.

Johnny drops the badge and searches for something else to lead him back to the true purpose of his investigation, but putting a hand on the filing cabinet throws him into watching Walt trap Sarah against it, his tongue quickly gaining entrance to her willing mouth. Johnny's hand refuses to move, his mind attached to the vision, as he watches Walt caress the woman he loves, soft kisses quickly becoming more heated, fingertips playing at shirt sleeves and necklines, tender skin exposed to the first explorations by that set of hands.

The moment breaks and Johnny rips his hand away from the suddenly hot metal surface, his breath coming in pants. The sensations he's experiencing aren't all bad, not all jealousy and disgust, and he tries not to think about what that means.

Johnny quickly moves to the files on Walt's desk looking for clues into where he may have gone to investigate a local murder. But as he moves to the desk, he trips and grabs onto the desk chair for support. His hands land on the work shirt draped along the back of the chair and he's no longer in the office. His vision gives way to the interior of Sarah's old apartment and the two people within it. Walt has her up against the wall, kissing her neck while his fingers pull her blouse from her slacks. The significance of the work shirt Walt is wearing works it way faintly into the back of Johnny's mind as he watches Sarah remove it, the taught muscles of his back revealed. He watches as Walt bends his neck to worry his lips along Sarah's collarbone, the milky expanse of her chest, the valley between her breasts…he hears her cry out in a familiar manner and can almost feel his teeth instead of Walt's upon her nipple.

By sheer force of will, Johnny yanks his hand from the shirt and ends the vision, but not before the damage is done. He feels the tightness in his pants and tells himself that he's just remembering his own time with Sarah before she was taken away, but even he knows that his thoughts are not that convincing.

Johnny grabs the hat from Walt's formal dress uniform, thinking that it will bring him farther away from his uncomfortable realizations and toward Walt's location, but he's not surprised as it throws him into yet another vision of Sarah and Walt. This time they're in their marriage bed- Johnny knows their house well enough that the eyelet curtains on the window and oaken bed register- and are already joined together, rocking and moaning. He knows that this is an invasion of privacy that only his Dead Zone can provide, but for the first time since he began this agonizing journey, he can't seem to make himself leave. His eyes take in the undulations of Sarah's body as she moves against her husband, the way her hair swings with each roll of her shoulder and each hearty moan that escapes her lips. As they tumble across the bed, now it's Walt that's squarely in his view, his face screwed up in concentration and ecstasy. His well toned calves and powerful build have never been more evident, Johnny thinks, and can't lie to himself that this is simple appreciation of the human form. Johnny's breath quickens along with that of the lovers, his pants in time with their pants until that moment of release.

The vision breaks, but its affect does not. Johnny realizes that the hat has been crumpled in his grip and forces himself to concentrate on smoothing it out, inwardly hoping that the distraction will calm down the now impossible to ignore situation below his waist.

He works out the wrinkles, breathing in and out slowly all the while, and places the cap back on the rack. And because he can't seem to imagine adding any more images to the onslaught, he collapses into the visitor's chair, his hands wedged in his armpits, safely away from the objects in the office.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

His body starts to calm, the physical manifestations of his vision beginning to abate. Johnny starts to wonder about the visions, why they seem determined to tell him nothing he wants to know and everything he's been trying to deny in the years since he awoke. He doesn't want to reminded of the way he still gravitates toward Sarah like a rat to the sticky sweetness of the trap. He can't bear to face the reasons behind the way the hairs stand up on the back of his neck when her husband walks into the room, and how they seem to dance along his skin when he watches them touch.

He needs to know whether Walt is dead or alive, damnit.

Johnny drops his head, feeling helpless and defeated by not only Walt's disappearance by also by his betraying emotions. He leans forward, his palms absently softening the surface between the edge of the desk and his forehead.

It's at that moment when the vision collides with his wandering attention.

He sees Walt, hands tied behind his back and affixed to a rusted metal chair. He see the dripping of murky water from leaky pipes above his head and the decaying carcasses of out of date tractors and farm equipment. He's in an abandoned wearhouse after all, Johnny thinks vaguely as his eyes scan the scene for clues as to Walt's condition. He squints, trying to look for signs of breathing. For a horrible, paralyzing moment he thinks that the sheriff's pale complexion and forward-drooped head mean the obvious, but then he sees it. The slight rise and fall of his chest.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

The ice in his veins turns to fire as realization hits. Then the vision goes into fast forward, the kidnapper in view, the path to the building clear, the roadmap to Walt's safety emblazoned in his mind.

Just like that, it's over. He rushes from the office, without a second thought into Sarah's arms, murmuring again and again "he's alright, he's alright" into her hair. Neither of them seem to notice the officers around them, their bodies melded almost completely together, but someone breaks the moment with a polite cough and Johnny gives all of the information to the dispatchers.

He doesn't understand exactly why all of that happened in the office, why he was shown all of those moments between Sarah and Walt before he could find what he needed to save a life. But he does know that the experience has changed him.

It's in the way that he doesn't question it when Sarah's hand clasps his own on the way to the warehouse. It's in the relief he feels when Walt's battered, yet breathing form comes into view. It's in how he grips the railing of the stretcher as he and Sarah help roll Walt to the ambulance.

And how the three of them ride to the hospital. Hands clasped. Together.

There will be time to examine all of this later, this perplexing situation he finds himself in.

But for now he's content to realize that it wasn't the movie he didn't like before or the way the two main characters interacted.

No. Now Johnny knows that the script simply needed a missing element to make the scenes palatable, to engage the audience of the one in the story.

The scenes are complete now, the clips entrancing with three actors in the story, instead of just two.

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End file.
